Haunted House In Hanover

By James Donahue

The home of DeAnna Simpson in Hanover, Pennsylvania, has been declared haunted by Simpson and a national television show.

Simpson said she and her husband bought the house seven years ago and didn’t know it was haunted until after they moved in. They have been living with what they believe are as many as five or more ghosts, plus a seven-foot-tall shadowy figure they believe may be a demon.

They have photographs and recordings to prove their claims.

The audio recordings are of voices, laughing children, and barking dogs. But they appear to be sounds that a recording might pick up in any neighborhood. Simpson claims they were made inside her modest brick two-story home.

She also can show you ghost pictures. She claims something in the house scratches people while they are in the house.

Simpson believes some of the ghosts in the house are friendly and are actually protecting her. Some of the other spirits are dark and inhuman, and appear to be out to cause harm.

Yet after seven years, Simpson is still living in the house and neither she or any members of her family have suffered physical injury. So are the ghostly figures real, or are they figments of her imagination?

When the television crew from Animal Planet visited the home the show concluded by bringing a local priest into the house to bless the place and ask the spirits to leave. Simpson said there was peace in the house for several weeks after this, but gradually the spirits returned. The place is haunted again.

The house is listed for sale if anybody is interested.

Actually, my late wife and I have lived in several haunted homes over the years and we experienced everything Mrs. Simpson has. We found it interesting to be living among spirits and found that while they can make themselves known to humans in interesting ways, they never harmed us or any of our friends.

One house had an upstairs room always filled with flies. It also had a roof leak that we could never fix. Another house had a bedroom that would unexpectedly fill with wasps. Occupants of both homes committed suicide in them both before and after we lived in them. So perhaps it is possible for the spirits to affect the people close to them in some way.

While living in these places we heard sounds of footsteps on wooden floors, the clanging of bells, knocks on the walls, and sometimes we captured light images on photographs. When out of my body I observed a massive dark figure lurking in the corner of one of the rooms.

We never knew if the big guy was there to scare us, or protect us. All I can say is that we were never harmed while living there.

I have had an interest in haunted buildings over the years and as a working newspaper reporter, was able to capture various stories about haunted places, usually around Halloween. It is my belief that most older buildings are haunted by the spirits of past occupants. Perhaps people just leave their energy behind them after they have moved on.